Obama, The Islamic State, And Christian Crucifixions (Part 2)

Last week, I built a case for how the Islamic State’s monstrous brutalities include the summary killing of men, women, and children, including by crucifixion. That was before the world heard of the beheading of courageous U.S. journalist James Foley, which demonstrated just how psychotic and cruel the Islamic State is.

Today, I will build further on the Islamic State’s horrors and crimes against humanity and then conclude by explaining why President Barack Obama’s laissez-faire mentality toward U.S. enemies is not only emboldening them but also drawing the U.S. closer and closer to another world war.

Reuters reported last week, “Refugee Samo Ilyas Ali has nine children to feed but he can’t focus on the future because the sounds of women and children crying out for help while being buried alive by Islamic State militants in northern Iraq often consume his mind.”

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Just two weeks ago, Islamic State terrorists came in the night with machine guns and began to dig ditches for mass graves in Ali’s village. A tearful Ali, who is a 46-year-old former grocer, explained: “We did not understand. Then they started to put people in those holes. Those people were alive. After a while we heard gunfire. I can’t forget that scene. Women, children, crying for help. We had to run for our lives. There was nothing to be done for them.”

If you still believe that the Islamic State wouldn’t brutally murder children in cold blood, consider a recent Anglican Communion News Service report. An emotionally distraught chaplain and Canon Andrew White explained that the 5-year-old son of a founder of Baghdad’s Anglican church was “cut in half during an attack by the Islamic State.” White explained: “I’m almost in tears because I’ve just had somebody in my room whose little child was cut in half. I baptized his child in my church in Baghdad. This little boy, they named him after me. He was called Andrew.”

Do routine beheadings really seemed far-fetched — of even children — for such a barbaric group as the Islamic State? Or do we somehow expect this extreme terrorist group among extreme terrorist groups to spare children and send them all to an orphanage, only to see them grow up and be the group’s archenemies?

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No wonder a large number of Christians fled the northern city of Mosul after the Islamic State’s message — convert to Islam, get out, or be killed — was broadcast by loudspeakers from the city’s mosques. The Islamic State’s leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, said that for Christians who don’t convert or leave, “the only option is the sword.”

Special advisers for the United Nations explained: “These reports are shocking in the extreme. They show, in very clear terms, the complete absence of humanity of the perpetrators of these crimes.” They are grave violations of human rights and international humanitarian law.